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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
DRC: Clashes between army factions displace North Kivu residents
GOMA, 13 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - Weekend fighting between rival factions of the armed forces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has displaced an undisclosed number of people, official sources reported on Monday.
The affected areas, located in the province of North Kivu, include Kanyabayonga, a town some 150 km northeast of the provincial capital, Goma, and the locality of Bweremana, on the border with South Kivu Province.
A military intelligence officer, Maj John Libende, told IRIN on Monday that the 126th Battalion of the Congolese army "has just chased from Kanyabayonga soldiers whom the Kinshasa government sent to the province of North Kivu without notifying us. They attacked our troops based in Kanyabayonga because they had refused to allow them to pass as they progressed towards our positions in Goma."
He said there was no information available on casualties.
The Congolese military is made up of groups that fought each other in recent years, mainly in the east and northeast of the country. Set up following a peace agreement signed last year, it includes members of the former government forces, various rebel movements, and militias made up of community defence groups known as the Mayi-Mayi.
The 126th Battalion, made up predominantly of former members of the Rassemblement congolais pour la Democratie (RCD - Congolese Rally for Democracy), based in Goma. The former rebel group comprises mainly Congolese who share the same language, Kinyarwanda, as the inhabitants of Rwanda.
The chairman of the North Kivu Civil Society, Jason Luneno, confirmed the clashes. The society is an umbrella of non-governmental organisations in the province.
"For three days now, the population has been evacuating the locality of Kanyabayonga and heading for the territory of Lubero, north of Kanyabayonga, to flee the already high tension between the soldiers who came from Kinshasa and those of the 126th Battalion," he told IRIN on Monday.
M'hand Ladjouzi, head of the North Kivu office of the UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC, deplored the clashes. "I intend to meet the interim commander of the 8th Military Region, Col Alfred Bindu, for him to order the factions fighting in Kanyabayonga to observe a ceasefire," he said. The 8th Military Region corresponds to North Kivu Province.
The decision to deploy fresh troops in North Kivu followed a spate of insecurity in the area, which is inhabited by Kinyarwanda speakers and other ethnic groups such as the Hunde, Tembo and Nande.
It also followed threats in November by the Rwandan government to send troops to flush out former Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) and Interahamwe - the Hutu militia that carried out much of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda - who, Kigali said, were preparing to attack Rwanda from bases in eastern DRC.
On 9 December, Congolese Defence Minister Jean-Pierre Ondekane told journalists that the DRC government was sending soldiers to North Kivu "to disarm the Interahamwe and protect the national borders".
His explanation came one day after members of the Kinyarwanda-speaking community held a demonstration in Goma to protest against the decision to send new troops. Demonstrators carried placards bearing messages such as "No to the sending of unmixed troops to North Kivu", "No to the extermination of the Kinyarwanda-speaking population" and "No to military clashes in North Kivu".
"The mission of the soldiers from Kinshasa will be to send away the Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese to Rwanda," Francois Gachaba, a spokesman of the Kinyarwanda-speaking community in Goma, told IRIN. He claimed that the new troops included members of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe.
A second demonstration was held in Goma on 8 December, this time by members of the Hunde, Tembo and Nande communities expressing support for the deployment of the new troops. The protesters accused the Kinyarwanda-speaking minority of supporting the presence of Rwandan troops in the DRC.
In addition to the clashes in Kanyabayonga, fighting was also reported in Bweremana, a locality on North Kivu's border with South Kivu. The fighting, which occurred on Saturday, pitted RCD-Goma soldiers against members of the Mayi-Mayi.
"The Mayi-Mayi lost the battle," Col Bindu told IRIN. "All the soldiers from the RCD former rebel movement no longer respond to my orders," he added.
Sources in Minova, a town on the South Kivu side of the border, reported the arrival of many people displaced by the fighting in Bweremana. Clashes between the former RCD-Goma fighters and the Mayi-Mayi about six weeks ago in Bweremana had also led to the displacement of thousands of civilians.
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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